Flow conditioners are typically used to reduce swirl and increase the symmetry of a flow profile inside a pipe to improve the accuracy of any meter that infers an average velocity from a single location. Flow conditioners are used typically in round pipes with a variety of flow meters such and a silt density index (SDI) meter, an ultrasonic meter, etc.
However, typical flow conditioners typically have suboptimal performance under certain conditioners. One such condition occurs when a flow is directed around a pipe elbow. The elbow introduces swirl into the flow that reduces the consistency of the flow across a cross-section of the pipe for a length of the pipe. An elbow further increases the velocity of the flow at the outside of the elbow while simultaneously decreasing the velocity at the inside of the elbow. Flow conditioners typically require a length of straight pipe to have a uniform flow prior to flow being conditioned by a flow conditioner.
Accordingly, there remains a need for a flow conditioner that is configured to condition a flow having an asymmetric flow profile. There further remains a need for such a flow conditioner conditioning the flow by distributing the asymmetry to have an asymmetry that is uniform across the diameter of the flow profile.
Other features of the flow conditioner, besides those discussed above, will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art from the description of the preferred embodiments which follows. In the description, reference is made to the accompanying drawings, which form a part hereof, and which illustrate examples of the invention. Such examples are illustrative, but for the scope of the invention, reference is made to the claims which follow the description.